Brand
October 25, 2024

Branding in luxury, fashion, and beauty: a key element for success.

By
Amandine Fernandez
Head of Marketing & Communications

In the luxury, fashion, and beauty sectors, brand image goes far beyond just a logo or a name. It embodies a story, expertise, strong values, and creates a unique experience for its consumers.

This is why branding becomes an essential tool in serving all of the company’s objectives. From increasing revenue to customer loyalty, and even reducing hiring costs.

Imagine a company as a symphonic orchestra: branding is the conductor, harmonizing each section to create a coherent and captivating melody that resonates with the audience. Without this direction, each instrument would play on its own, creating a cacophony instead of a beautiful harmony.

The main branding challenges in the luxury sector

Branding offers many benefits, but it also comes with its share of challenges. Companies in the luxury, fashion, and beauty sectors must specifically:

  1. Measure the return on investment (ROI) of branding operations.
  2. Ensure brand consistency across all communication channels.
  3. Manage the brand’s perception in light of evolving trends and over time.
  4. Maintain brand authenticity while continuing to innovate.

These challenges highlight the importance of developing a well-defined brand strategy and investing in initiatives that enhance brand awareness and consistency.

Why a strong and consistent brand makes all the difference?

The numbers speak for themselves: a consistent brand can increase revenue by 33% and make the brand 3.5 times more visible to its customers. A strong brand can also reduce recruitment costs by 50%. These statistics clearly show that the consistency and strength of a brand have a direct impact on the financial performance of the company.

The 5 key benefits of a strong and consistent brand

Les bénéfices d'une marque forte
Les bénéfices d'une marque forte

Brand value and financial performance:

  • A study published in the Journal of Marketing Research showed that strong brands tend to have better financial performance, particularly in terms of profitability and return for shareholders.
  • Resilience during crises: Strong brands tend to weather economic or scandal crises better. A BrandZ study found that during the 2008 financial crisis, strong brands recovered nine times faster than others in terms of market value.

Reduction of marketing costs:

Attractiveness for talent:

  • Well-regarded brands can reduce training and recruitment costs by 50%.
  • 72% of global recruitment leaders say employer branding has a significant impact on hiring.
  • 28% higher recruitment probability.
  • 50% of employers report more qualified candidates.
  • A strong brand is associated with a 28% reduction in organizational turnover.
  • It has been found that the lack of brand consistency tends to embarrass employees and lower morale.

Engaged employees who are proud to work for your brand:

  • It’s important to know that 83% of employees are proud of their work and go above and beyond if they are proud of the company they work for. A solid brand strategy is a great way to show employees that their work is appreciated.
  • Happy employees tend to be more engaged, and engaged employees stay longer in the company, are more productive, and are 21% more profitable.

Increases customer loyalty and distinguishes you from the competition:

Brand consistency: a fundamental pillar

Brand consistency is key to building consumer trust. This involves perfect uniformity across all touchpoints: visuals, tone of voice, messaging, and customer experience. Every aspect must align with the brand’s identity and values.

  • Visual identity: Consistent use of logos, colors, fonts, and other design elements helps consumers instantly recognize the brand.
  • Tone of voice: The way the brand expresses itself in communications, whether in advertisements, on social media, or internally, must remain constant.
  • Messaging: The heart of what the brand wants to communicate, including its mission, vision, and values, must be clearly and consistently expressed in all communications.
  • Customer experience: The overall experience provided by the brand, from the first contact to after-sales, must align with the promises and values of the brand.
  • Product: From design to packaging, to quality and price, the product, even the most innovative, must reflect the foundational values and heart of the brand.

Brand consistency must be reflected across all channels:

All communication platforms and customer touchpoints, both online and offline, must present a consistent brand. This starts with standardizing the first communication channel of companies: email.

Email signatures: an organic lever to capitalize on

Email signatures are often underestimated, yet they can become powerful assets for the brand. In addition to reflecting the aesthetic and visual identity of the brand, they can be used to promote personalized offers, recruitment campaigns, or ethical and sustainability initiatives.

The email signature for the Brand

1. Brand Identity and Values: The Art of Leaving a Mark

Email signatures can be designed to reflect the aesthetics and visual identity of the luxury brand. An elegant, sophisticated, and harmonious design strengthens the brand image and creates a positive impression among recipients. They subtly but powerfully convey the brand’s identity, ensuring continuity in communication.

"We implemented Letsignit to harmonize our signatures and maintain a consistent brand image. The tool is simple and practical, a real time-saver. Today, our signatures, like our banners, also redirect our audiences to our website, social media, and generate traffic!" says Damien Marty, IT Manager at IZIPIZI.

2. Unique Customer Experience: Personalize, Amaze, Retain

Email signatures can also include personalized information, such as special offers tailored to the client’s preferences and purchase history, providing a more user-friendly and attentive customer experience. Additionally, they highlight the unique features of the brand, exclusive products, or premium services, allowing the communication department to stand out in an ever-evolving competitive environment.

3. Sustainability and Social Responsibility: Communicate Your Commitments

In a sector where consumers increasingly value sustainability and ethics, integrating these elements into each touchpoint, including email signatures, helps to reinforce the brand's reputation. Email signatures can include graphic elements or links to pages dedicated to the company’s sustainability and ethical initiatives. This helps create an emotional connection with consumers who are sensitive to these issues.

Addressing HR and internal communication challenges

1. Recruitment: Attract Talents That Reflect Your Brand

Email signatures, via email banners, can relay recruitment campaigns, reach a broader audience, and encourage talent applications who may not be aware of open positions through traditional channels. This helps increase the visibility of job offers and attract candidates who share the brand’s values.

"For us, the main benefits of Letsignit are the automatic insertion of signatures into emails, synchronization of our company directory with the solution, standardization of the signature, and, of course, the ability to insert communication campaigns. At Messika, we work on CSR, internal recruitment, sponsorship,... and the signature helps us communicate efficiently on these topics." says Franck Diogo, CIO at Messika Jewelry.

2. Company Culture and Talent Retention: Build Connections, Engage Your Teams

In internal communication, email signatures can relay important information, company culture news, onboarding processes, or promote internal HR tools available. They thus become an intelligent and widespread channel for all internal initiatives, reinforcing employee cohesion and engagement.

Branding in luxury, fashion, and beauty is much more than a simple marketing effort:

It is the soul of the brand, a complete ecosystem that shapes every interaction with the consumer. By working to strengthen the consistency and strength of the brand, companies can ensure a prominent place in the minds of consumers, today and in the future.

Email signatures, though seemingly trivial, can become powerful assets for the brand, both externally and internally, by relaying key messages, reinforcing the brand’s identity, and contributing to a seamless and engaged customer experience.

About the author
Amandine is the Head of Marketing & Communications at Letsignit. Initially a content specialist, she now actively contributes to the brand's visibility and growth. A true "dinosaur" at Letsignit (more than 6 years now!), she designs marketing projects and campaigns that reflect a sharp vision, voice, and creativity. P.S. If you love Marseille, you'll most likely run into her on the rocks of Vallon des Auffes (at any time of day)!
About Letsignit
Letsignit is an email signature management solution that allows organizations to transform their employees' email signatures into a powerful 1-to-1 engagement medium for their brands and campaigns.

Questions
Fréquentes

1

Is it possible to track the number of clicks on email signatures?

Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.

You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.

If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.

2

Can we add links to social networks, our website, and appointment-setting applications such as Calendly?

With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.

And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.

3

Can employees update their signature information themselves (number, function, etc.)?

It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.

This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.

4

Why it is important to standardize our email signatures on a large scale to ensure our identity and brand image?

It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!

A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.

With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.

5

What is the user experience like for our employees?

What is the user experience like for our employees?

  • If you opt for the Letsignit Add-in for Outlook, they will have a dedicated space in their Outlook account where they will be able to view the signatures and campaigns assigned to them.
  • If you opt for the Letsignit Desktop APP, they will be able to preview all their signatures and campaigns in this space. If they want to change their default signature to another one when sending an email, this will be done in their signature library in Outlook.

In both cases:

  • They preview their signature before sending an email and choose from signatures assigned to them.
  • Based on the permissions granted, they will also be able to modify their personal information such as their name, position, or address in these spaces.

In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.

6

Can my employees have multiple signatures available to them?

With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.

Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:

Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.

7

Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

8

Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

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